For Love and Glory

X

Inga never quite slept. After dark the towers and slipways of its centrum flared with light, pulsed with traffic, life that the free city, largest on Asborg, drew unto itself from the whole planet and beyond. The harbor district lay quiet, though, watercraft and machines waiting for sunrise. Walls along the docks lifted sheer, their darknesses blocking off all but sky-glow. Thus eyes found stars above the bay. Past full, the bigger moon was nonetheless rising bright enough to throw a bridge over the waves, which they broke into shivers and sparkles. Their lap-lap against the piers sounded clear through the throbbing westward. Smells of salt, engines, cargoes drifted cool.

Gerward Valen stopped before his apartment building. “Here we are,” he said needlessly. Was it shyness that thickened his accent? Ordinarly he spoke fluent Anglay. The vague illumination showed him tensed within the gray tunic and breeks of a Comet Line officer. “The hour’s gotten later than I expected. If you’d rather postpone the, the conference—”

Lissa considered him. He stood a head taller than her, with the slenderness, sharp features, fair complexion of his Brusan people. As was common these days on Asborg, he went beardless and kept his hair short. Those blond locks had thinned and dulled, furrows ran through brow and cheeks, he must be well overdue for a rejuvenation. She hadn’t ventured to ask why. The eyes, in their deep sockets amidst the crow’s-feet, remained clear. “No,” she said, “I think we had best get to our business,” putting a slight emphasis on the last word, lest he misunderstand.

It had, after all, been a pleasant evening, dinner at the Baltica, liqueurs, animated conversation throughout, that continued while they walked the three kilometers to this place. They discovered a shared passion for Asborg’s wildernesses; he resorted especially to the Hallan Alps, and had had some colorful experiences there. Otherwise he said little about himself, nothing about his past. However, she felt she had come to know him well enough for her purposes. Several personal meetings, after her agents had compiled a report on him, should suffice. They’d better. Time was growing short.

“Very well,” he agreed. “If you please, milady.” The door identified him and retracted. He let her precede him into a drab lobby and onto the up spiral. It carried them to the fourth floor.

Admitted to his lodging, she glanced about, hoping for more clues to his personality, and found disappointment. The living room was small, aseptically clean, sparsely furnished. While she had gathered he was an omnivorous reader, it seemed he owned nothing printed but drew entirely on the public database. Well, maybe he’d picked these quarters because a transparency offered what must be a spectacular daylight view of bay, headlands, and ocean.

“Please be seated,” he urged. “Can I offer you a drink?”

Lissa took a chair. Like the rest, it was rigid. “Just coffee,” she said. “No sweetener.”

Valen raised his brows. “Nor brandy? As you wish. I’ll have a snifter myself, if you don’t mind.” The dossier related that he drank rather heavily, though not to the point of impairment and never in space. He shunned psychotropes. His occasional visits to Calie’s Bower hardly counted as a vice in a man unmarried. The girls there found him likeable, yet none of them had really gotten to know him, any more than his shipmates and groundside acquaintances had.

He stepped into the cuisinette. She heard a pot whirr. He came back carrying a goblet half full of amber liquid. “Yours will be ready in a couple of minutes,” he said, and sipped. The motion was jerky. “Would you care for some music? Only name it.”

“No, thank you,” she replied. “Nice in the restaurant, but pointless now. Neither of us would hear, I think.”

He tautened further. “What do you want with me, Milady Windholm?”

Her hazel gaze met his blue. “First and foremost,” she told him, “your pledge to keep everything secret. I’ve satisfied myself that you can. Will you?”

“I take for granted this is… honorable,” he said slowly.

She stiffened her tone. “You know my father is Davy, Head of our House.”

“Indeed. And I’ve heard about you.” A lopsided smile creased the gaunt face. “When a member of one of this world’s ruling families seeks me out, talking about a possible service but not specifying it, I do a bit of inquiry on my own. I found a couple of men who’ve gone exploring with you. They spoke highly.” He drew breath. “You have my promise. Absolute confidentiality until you release me from it. What do you want me to do?”

Despite herself, she felt her pulse quicken. “Don’t you think you’re wasted as mate on a wretched ore freighter?”

His expression blanked. He shrugged. “It’s the best berth available. At that, you remember, I had to work up to it. There isn’t much space trade hereabouts.”

The thought flitted unbidden: No, there isn’t, as isolated as we are, on this far fringe of human settlement. Not that distance matters when you hyperjump. But after two centuries, we are still not so many on Asborg, and most of us are preoccupied with our local affairs. The other planets of Sunniva suffice us. Even I and my comrades find exploration ample for lifetimes among the immediate neighbor stars.

Is that what called you to us, Gerward Valen? Our loneliness?

“Once you had a command,” she threw at him. “It was a fully robotic vessel. How would you like it again?”

He stood unstirring.

“That was long ago,” she pursued, “but we, my associates in this enterprise and I, we don’t believe you’ve lost the skills. A little practice should restore them completely. If anything, to be an officer with a live crew, as you are these days, is more demanding, and your record is good.

He kept his countenance locked, but she barely heard his question, and it trembled. “What ship do you mean?”

“The Dagmar, of course. Windholm only has one of that kind.” Few Houses possessed any; they cost. “We sponsor scientific expeditions, you see. I’m lately back from one on her. No cosmonaut myself, but I can assure you she’s a lovely, capable craft.”

“I know.” He stared beyond her, drank, and asked in an almost normal voice, “Why do you want me? You have your qualified people.”

“Three,” stated Lissa. “Fallen Windholm is currently undergoing rejuvenation. The other two are from client families, perfectly fine except that—Chand Mikelsson is a blabbermouth. You can trust him with anything except a secret. Sara Tomasdaughter’s husband is one Rion Stellamont. I don’t say she would betray our confidence to him and his House, but… best not subject her to a conflict of loyalties, right?”

He seemed to have quite regained his balance. “Since we’re being so frank, what about me? The Comet Line belongs to the Eastlands, after all, and the Windholms have been at loggerheads with them as often as the Stellamonts or any others.”

“You’re a resident foreigner. You owe them no fealty and they’ve had no oaths from you. Take an unpaid leave, and you’re a free agent. Afterward, I expect we’ll offer you something permanent.” Lissa softened her words. “Not that we ask any betrayal. We simply don’t want outsiders thrusting in—at least not till we understand the situation ourselves.”

His glance went to the transparency and the stars that the lighting hid from him. “Does that include everybody? Human and nonhuman?”

She nodded. “Aside from the Susaians, those of them that already know, and are concealing the truth. Whatever it is. Something tremendous, we believe. Potentially—explosive? For good or ill, not anything we want irresponsibly released.”

His dryness was a challenge: “Especially not to rival Houses.”

Anger flickered. “We’re no saints in Windholm. But I don’t think you, either, would like this planet if the balance of power lay with a religious fanatic like Arnus Eastland or a clutch of reckless commercialists like the Seafell.”

He cocked a brow. She practically heard him refrain from saying: So you deem them.

“And as for the galaxy at large,” she continued, striving for calm, “simply think what an uproar that Forerunner artifact on Jonna is already raising. And it probably doesn’t hold a fraction of the potentials that this new thing may. I repeat, may. There’s no foretelling what equilibriums it could upset. Perhaps none, but it’d be irresponsible not to proceed with every possible precaution. There may well be danger anyway, danger enough to suit the rashest rattlebrain.”

He smiled. “Which you assume I am not.”

The abrupt lightness of his manner eased her. He can handle people pretty well when he wants to, she thought. Excellent. She laughed. “Explorers have an old, old saying, that adventure is what happens to the incompetent. What we intend is simply an investigation. Once we know more, we’ll decide what to do next.” Sobering, she finished, “My father has been the Head of his House, with as strong a voice in the World Council as any, for nearly two hundred years. Ask yourself, hasn’t he proven out? A hardheaded realist, yes, but concerned with the welfare of Asborg more than of his kin or clients, and with civilization as a whole over and above that. Will you put your faith in him, or in a coven of lizards?”

Valen frowned the least bit. She suspected he found her language objectionable, as a person might who had fared widely about and dealt with many different beings. “Oh, I’m not parochial,” she said quickly. “Contrariwise. In fact, we were alerted to this by a Susaian, and he’ll travel with us.”

“Us?” he murmured.

Blood heated her face. “If you accept the mission.”

“I rather think I will.” He inhaled a fragrance from the cuisinette. “Your coffee’s ready, milady. I’ll bring it.”